Monday, March 7, 2011

Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass containing an ice cone. Add a straw and garnish with 2 mint leaves.

Last Wednesday, I stopped by Clio to pay Todd Maul a visit. It was unrelated to the great press Todd had received early that week from both MC Slim JB on SeriousEats and Lauren Clarke on DrinkBoston, but it did not hurt. I was actually stopping by to drop off some plastic pipettes that Todd needed for one of his projects before I went on to meet Andrea later that night at Aquitaine. Well, having a chance to sit at Todd's bar again was a good second reason.

One drink that Todd wanted to make for me was the Gold Cup which he hopes to put on the Spring menu. The original recipe appears in Beach Bum Berry's Remixed; Berry's history places the drinks creation at the Hukilau Polynesian Room of the Captain's Inn in Long Beach, CA, around 1962. Todd found the original recipe a bit too sweet so he made a few changes to the recipe as well as to the garnish. As for the latter, Todd opted for an ice cone that the Hukilau Room used for their Captain's Grog over the original Gold Cup's call for an ice shell hood.

The Gold Cup started with a lime juice aroma that was punctuated with hints of anise and mint. While the sip was mainly the lime juice, the swallow was a rich rum flavor coupled with the Maraschino. The Maraschino was less funky than usual and was possibly smoothed out by the orgeat. Finally, the drink finished with a light degree of spice from the absinthe.

Seems to me you could approximate Maraschino's flavor profile with a combination of Cherry Heering and a quality amaretto. Probably on the sweet side, and you're going to end up with a very different coloring.

The fact that you posted this right after I got on my Tiki kick was a sign, so I gave it a spin. I loved this drink, I would not have thought Maraschino and Absinthe could go together so well. I did cut the lime down to 1 oz, as it sounded a bit high. My ice cone fell apart a little, I guess I should have let it melt a little more first before freezing it.

I believe that Todd increased the lime for he wanted the drink drier, so dropping the lime juice actually puts your recipe closer to the original.

Making an ice cone is an art. The one (actually a pair that I made) for the ones in the "ice cone" link, took multiple tries. Lots of failures including breaking my Pilsner glass. I later switched to plastic fizzy water bottles with the bottom cut out (when it's finished, you can unscrew the cap to help push it up not to mention squeeze the sides -- and with a little hot water, the square end near the cap disappeared).

Falling apart was one of my biggest problems. I think Todd gets around it by using wet ice (sitting around so it's beginning to melt) before crushing it. My experiments used ice from the freezer and crushed by Lewis Bag or hand cranked crusher. I ended up adding water to wet down the mass. Wood chopsticks stick to the ice so I forgot how I opted for plastic chopsticks. Todd recommends putting a plastic straw over a wood chopstick so it slides out.

Yeah, what looks so easy took many rounds of experiments and failures, so you are not alone.

who? what?

The euphemisms are getting a bit stale, suffice to say: four people in Boston -- two of whom are much more prolific writers than the other two (including the originator of this blog, who has no excuse apart from laziness) -- who drink and tell.

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